Hi all, Do we have any guidelines limiting the use of CentralNotices? I noticed there are a lot lately (fundraising, wikimania and most recently board elections and commons POTY), some of which are not of much interest to the audience.

Hi all, Do we have any guidelines limiting the use of CentralNotices? I noticed there are a lot lately (fundraising, wikimania and most recently board elections and commons POTY), some of which are not of much interest to the audience.

Hi all, Do we have any guidelines limiting the use of CentralNotices? I noticed there are a lot lately (fundraising, wikimania and most recently board elections and commons POTY), some of which are not of much interest to the audience. Take for example one of the most recent banners about candidate submissions for Wikimedia's Board Elections[1]. Until most recently, it has been displayed on every single page view for most of our 400 Million readers or so, according to the setup for 20 days. >99.9999% of our readers won't be candidates and for most of them, this is of no interest at all. Which is sad of course, we'd love to get more qualified and diverse candidates – that is to say, not only members of Wikimedia's core community. Nevertheless, the question remains: do the positive effects (chances on higher diversity) outweigh the negative consequences (readers/authors are annoyed)? Take another example: The call for votes on common's anual picture of the year competition has two very large banners with colorful images on them [2]. I think, there has to be a serious consideration for each banner, whether its positive effects outweigh negative consequences. Most importantly, the fact that banners divert the readers attention and are therefor in most cases not in his direct interest, has to be considered. There are several ways of minimizing negative effects: 1. Display it for logged-in users only. This is especially useful for information concerning active Wikimedians, e.g. Wikimania, POTY, etc. 2. Reduce weight - don't display a banner on every page view, but only on one in ten. (We have to use blank banners to do that, right?[3]) 3. Reduce duration. (e.g. Don't display banners for a month, only a week) 4. Reduce banner size and intrusiveness. Use text banners instead of colorful images. What do you think? Do we need to limit the use of CentralNotice through guidelines or introduce technical measurements (e.g. blank banners[3]) or just appeal to meta admins to consider negative effects or is everything fine the way it is? Regards, Tobias / User:Church of emacs [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&… [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:CentralNotice&metho… [3] Afaik changing weight alone only changes the distribution of banners. We'd have to add a "pseudo banner" which is completely empty and then give it some weight. Using that, we ensure that there isn't a banner on *every* page view, only on 1 in 5 or 1 in 10 or so. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

church.of.emacs.ml, 19/05/2011 10:52: The first thing to do is 4): standard templates like [1] and [2] are ok, while the recent "march/may updates"[3] and POTY [4] seem unnecessarily big. 1) is the easiest and most obvious; such banners could also be restricted only to users with at least 100/200/whatever number of edits, but e.g. I wouldn't know how to do so; some documentation would be useful. 3) is not necessary in itself, but it is so if there are many banners: CentralNotice shouldn't be in permanent use, so if there are many requests there should be some scheduling. It should also be considered that the CentralNotice kills local community sitenotices, although they are usually more important and interesting for local users. Local communities should be able to use the sitenotice at least for some periods of the year. Finally, I wonder how useful are big banners such as the "May update". I like it (although I had to hide it a dozen times a day on several wikis), but I didn't see any effect. Reading the letter is not so useful in itself; it's useful if there's some discussion. There was a long discussion on it.wiki when the board resolution was posted on the village pump, but nothing after the CentralNotice. A local, very small sitenotice with a link to a local discussion is probably much more effective; perhaps it would be nice to offer communities to disable the CentralNotice if they implement a local sitenotice or other solution. Nemo [1] < http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&… [2] < http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&… [3] < http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&… [4] < http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:CentralNotice&metho… _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

I thought these notices *are* displayed for logged-in users only, if they aren't, then they should. At least the POTY notice doesn't show up for me when I'm logged out. I agree with you in regards to the use of images, and I think it should be constrained to fundraising banners. "Size and intrusiveness" could be proportional to the importance of the message, but the "notice" should be "noticeable" as many editors just don't see it if it's too plain. However, I think Thomas Morton's suggestion to tie the "hide" option to accounts instead of cookies would solve that and most of the other concerns, since the main annoyance seems to be that the banners keep reappearing despite clicking the [x] over and over again. The importance of such notices is that they give editors the chance to know what's going on and take part in various community processes, which are usually very hard to find and figure out, especially for those editors who are working mainly on content, or haven'ts been around for years. So I think there are huge positives there and they shouldn't be impacted if there becomes a guideline. Regards, -- Orionist On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 12:52 PM, church.of.emacs.ml <church.of.emacs.ml@ googlemail.com> wrote: http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&… http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:CentralNotice&metho… _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

wrote:

It could well be that an image banner does improve click through and (in the case of the fund raiser) donations... but I can't find any actual A/B tests (or any other tests) to see if this is actually the case or not.

I thought these notices *are* displayed for logged-in users only, if they aren't, then they should. At least the POTY notice doesn't show up for me when I'm logged out.

On 05/19/2011 10:52 AM, church.of.emacs.ml wrote: Agreed with this in relation to the Board elections. Just users with accounts are able to vote or to be candidates. And those who are interested in our governing should be able to read it on Meta, which should have clear note on Main Page that there are ongoing elections.

On 05/19/2011 05:42 PM, Kirill Lokshin wrote: Then notices just on Main Pages? I don't think that a random user from search engines is interested in our governing. Not to say that if someone is interested in Wiki*p*edia governing, may be introduced into the whole process after two or three pages, starting from [[Wikipedia]] in any language. As an account owner on LiveJournal, but without any activity, I am getting emails which inform me about the process of their elections. However, I don't remember that I saw that online (although I am very rarely there). I have no precise idea how, but it is obvious that we need to lower amount of our own advertising to random users. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 11:55 AM, Milos Rancic &lt;millosh(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Main Pages tend to be far more reader-facing than editor-facing, in my experience; I'd be surprised if all that many regular editors visit them. A better alternative, in my opinion, would be editor-facing pages such as watchlists, noticeboards, etc. Not to say that if someone is interested in Wiki*p*edia governing, may Being able to have banners displayed to particular subsets of users, as MZMcBride suggested, would go a long way to solving the problem. Given that the voting eligibility is based purely on a technical criterion, there's no reason why we couldn't display notices only to those users actually eligible to participate. Kirill _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Hi all, Do we have any guidelines limiting the use of CentralNotices? I noticed there are a lot lately (fundraising, wikimania and most recently board elections and commons POTY), some of which are not of much interest to the audience. Take for example one of the most recent banners about candidate submissions for Wikimedia's Board Elections[1]. Until most recently, it has been displayed on every single page view for most of our 400 Million readers or so, according to the setup for 20 days. >99.9999% of our readers won't be candidates and for most of them, this is of no interest at all. Which is sad of course, we'd love to get more qualified and diverse candidates – that is to say, not only members of Wikimedia's core community. Nevertheless, the question remains: do the positive effects (chances on higher diversity) outweigh the negative consequences (readers/authors are annoyed)? Take another example: The call for votes on common's anual picture of the year competition has two very large banners with colorful images on them [2]. I think, there has to be a serious consideration for each banner, whether its positive effects outweigh negative consequences. Most importantly, the fact that banners divert the readers attention and are therefor in most cases not in his direct interest, has to be considered. There are several ways of minimizing negative effects: 1. Display it for logged-in users only. This is especially useful for information concerning active Wikimedians, e.g. Wikimania, POTY, etc. 2. Reduce weight - don't display a banner on every page view, but only on one in ten. (We have to use blank banners to do that, right?[3]) 3. Reduce duration. (e.g. Don't display banners for a month, only a week) 4. Reduce banner size and intrusiveness. Use text banners instead of colorful images. What do you think? Do we need to limit the use of CentralNotice through guidelines or introduce technical measurements (e.g. blank banners[3]) or just appeal to meta admins to consider negative effects or is everything fine the way it is? Regards, Tobias / User:Church of emacs [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&… [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:CentralNotice&metho… [3] Afaik changing weight alone only changes the distribution of banners. We'd have to add a "pseudo banner" which is completely empty and then give it some weight. Using that, we ensure that there isn't a banner on *every* page view, only on 1 in 5 or 1 in 10 or so.

Currently, there are no clear guidelines on the community's use of central-notice - multiple geo-located, chapter-requested campaigns have been running on central-notice without objection. Global-banners have been used for things like the March/May update and for soliciting candidates for the board election. It's time to consider guidelines if we are going to have Global banners.

Also, we need a page on Meta where any future requests could be placed and voted on, the current logging page for central notice could eventually be replaced with it.

Until most recently, it has been displayed on every single page view for most of our 400 Million readers or so, according to the setup for 20 days

Philippe Beaudette wrote: then Planned where and by whom? MZMcBride

Hi all, Do we have any guidelines limiting the use of CentralNotices? I noticed there are a lot lately (fundraising, wikimania and most recently board elections and commons POTY), some of which are not of much interest to the audience. Take for example one of the most recent banners about candidate submissions for Wikimedia's Board Elections[1]. Until most recently, it has been displayed on every single page view for most of our 400 Million readers or so, according to the setup for 20 days.>99.9999% of our readers won't be candidates and for most of them, this is of no interest at all. Which is sad of course, we'd love to get more qualified and diverse candidates – that is to say, not only members of Wikimedia's core community. Nevertheless, the question remains: do the positive effects (chances on higher diversity) outweigh the negative consequences (readers/authors are annoyed)? Take another example: The call for votes on common's anual picture of the year competition has two very large banners with colorful images on them [2]. I think, there has to be a serious consideration for each banner, whether its positive effects outweigh negative consequences. Most importantly, the fact that banners divert the readers attention and are therefor in most cases not in his direct interest, has to be considered. There are several ways of minimizing negative effects: 1. Display it for logged-in users only. This is especially useful for information concerning active Wikimedians, e.g. Wikimania, POTY, etc. 2. Reduce weight - don't display a banner on every page view, but only on one in ten. (We have to use blank banners to do that, right?[3]) 3. Reduce duration. (e.g. Don't display banners for a month, only a week) 4. Reduce banner size and intrusiveness. Use text banners instead of colorful images. What do you think? Do we need to limit the use of CentralNotice through guidelines or introduce technical measurements (e.g. blank banners[3]) or just appeal to meta admins to consider negative effects or is everything fine the way it is? Regards, Tobias / User:Church of emacs [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&… [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:CentralNotice&metho… [3] Afaik changing weight alone only changes the distribution of banners. We'd have to add a "pseudo banner" which is completely empty and then give it some weight. Using that, we ensure that there isn't a banner on *every* page view, only on 1 in 5 or 1 in 10 or so. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

There are several ways of minimizing negative effects: 1. Display it for logged-in users only. This is especially useful for information concerning active Wikimedians, e.g. Wikimania, POTY, etc. 2. Reduce weight - don't display a banner on every page view, but only on one in ten. (We have to use blank banners to do that, right?[3]) 3. Reduce duration. (e.g. Don't display banners for a month, only a week) 4. Reduce banner size and intrusiveness. Use text banners instead of colorful images.

Are there any devs on your proposal? Or is development planned in this area? (If these are two noes, it might be an idea for WMDE's community project budget)